


Savior

by CheshireJabberwock



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Undertale Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5734906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheshireJabberwock/pseuds/CheshireJabberwock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chrome falls down Mount Ebott.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Savior

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as a khrsecretsanta gift, but I liked it enough to clean it up and post it. :)

Chrome falls down Mount Ebott, and she’s not alone anymore.

The first soul alongside her own indigo is orange and warm.

He flees from battle when he can, and refuses to fight when he can’t, so she follows his lead.

He cries when she won’t stay with Toriel, where they’re loved, where it’s easy, where no one has to get hurt. But the Ruins are very small, and Chrome knows she can’t stay here. There is something menacing in the shadows, and if she’s not careful, it will devour her. Besides, there’s something she needs to do.

The orange soul is quite timid, she thinks, when he squawks and flinches at every monster that approaches, and only baffles at sans’s jokes. But he’s also very kind. He’s fond of Papyrus immediately, and he loves the gentle puzzles.

He’s afraid of dogs, but he won’t hurt them, either.

He can’t fight Papyrus, and Chrome won’t force him. Her grasp on his hand is so fragile. If she breaks his heart, he’ll disappear. She doesn’t want to be alone again.

Fortunately, Papyrus won’t hurt them either, not really. After they escape their “capture” a few times, he insists they be friends instead. The orange soul is so happy. He hurries back to play with their new skeleton friend and is brought near to tears by the gift of terrible spaghetti.

He must have been alone before, Chrome thinks. Like her. In a kinder world, maybe, but alone is alone.

He loves the beauty of Waterfall, even as he shrinks at the tragedy written on the walls. Undyne terrifies him, though. Chrome’s never been able to run so fast before.

Having the monster child beside them is a comfort.

The orange soul grows braver when he has friends beside him, Chrome observes. She’s able to walk with more confidence, more purpose, the more people treat her with kindness, the more reason she has to protect.

He urges her to run forward to save the monster child, even though Undyne is standing right there.

Of course, they’re fleeing from Undyne minutes later, but when she collapses from the sweltering heat of her armor, the orange soul only hesitates for a moment before he’s encouraging Chrome to give the fish woman water.

And when Undyne walks away, that’s when the orange soul finally feels at ease. Things were different above, but kindness is rewarded here.

Remembering Papyrus’s call, he shyly wonders if they can go play with Undyne, too. He desperately wants more friends. Chrome is happy to oblige. She likes Undyne. The knight’s passion is entrancing.

Her invisible partner is a little overwhelmed by their… “cooking lesson,” but Chrome has a lot of fun.

She has to soothe him to calm when they find out Alphys has been watching them the whole time, and then again during Mettaton’s quiz show. His bemusement when he sees Alphys giving them the answers turns to a spark of awareness when Mettaton asks them who Alphys has a crush on and Chrome answers Undyne, because Undyne is the type of magnetic personality that inspires crushes.

Mettaton knows so much about Alphys, the orange soul notices. They must be close.

Alphys is being nice to us, the orange soul notices. She wants to be friends.

If Mettaton is Alphys’s friend, and we’re Alphys’s friends, Mettaton wouldn’t hurt us, the orange soul reasons. He trusts Alphys already.

Why? Chrome wonders. But he has no answer. He just does.

That trust helps, though. Mettaton’s trials _are_ more fun with the orange soul’s conviction that they’re not in danger.

Because of that, he begs her to find a way to spare the robot when Mettaton finally declares their doom to be upon them. Then he hides his face in embarrassment as Chrome mimics Mettaton’s flashy poses and dramatic behavior until the ratings skyrocket.

After so much joy and laughter, the orange soul refuses to accept it when Alphys tells them they’ll have to kill Asgore. He only becomes more resolute as they hear Asriel’s story, and they’re told why Asgore has to kill them.

They see Asgore is a kindly old man who doesn’t want to hurt them either, and her partner is d e t e r m i n e d to save him.

So she does.

And Flowey kills him.

Then steals the human souls.

The battle that ensues is hell after hell after hell, but Chrome fights and fights and fights. _He took her friend._

Finally, finally, it seems she’s won, with her friend’s help, and that of all the others trapped like him.

But Flowey loads his “save” at full health. He kills her and kills her. He taunts her. He tells her to call for help. So she does.

She’s bathed in orange light.

For a split second, she sees Flowey’s stunned face. Then she wakes up in the Ruins, on a bed of golden flowers.

The orange soul is gone. Somehow, Chrome knows he’s free. Maybe he’s gone home, maybe he’s passed on, but he’s no longer in the underground. The monsters don’t have six souls anymore, only five.

And she knows what she’s here to do.

The soul beside her now is yellow, boisterous and eager. He charges forward to fight every monster, dragging her along with him, but his intentions aren’t malicious.

He refuses to kill – no, he _can’t_ kill them. After all, monsters are hurt by the will to hurt, and this soul wants sport, not violence. He abhors true violence. So the monsters in their path may leave a little bit bruised, a little bit dazed, but none seriously wounded. None killed.

Chrome does need to warn him when certain monsters shouldn’t be fought if he doesn’t want to kill them. He listens, though. His kindness is different than the orange soul’s – the kindness of someone who’s never known cruelty, loss, loneliness – but he’s still kind.

He’s impatient to move on from the Ruins, barely heeding Toriel’s warnings. Chrome feels almost like a toy, hauled around everywhere a little too exuberantly. But his will doesn’t diverge much from hers, so it’s not uncomfortable.

She does wish he would take the time to enjoy the underground’s pleasures a little, though. He’s enthusiastically amicable with sans and Papyrus, but he doesn’t stay to become friends like the orange soul did. It’s all she can do to drag him away from Undyne so he doesn’t accidentally kill her, he’s so thrilled to have a “match” with her. He loves Mettaton’s games, but he blasts through them, and he never notices Alphys’s feelings.

At least his antics boost Mettaton’s show’s ratings faster than her own attempts last time. She was a little worried about how that battle would go.

Then they reach the end. The yellow soul closes his heart to Asgore’s plight, to Chrome’s surprise. At last, she learns something about him.

He has a little sister, he tells her. She’s waiting for him. And he’s d e t e r m i n e d to return to her.

Chrome doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s dead.

So they kill Asgore.

Flowey returns, wary now, fiercer now. But he has five souls, not six. And the yellow soul’s determination is more aggressive than the orange soul’s. When Chrome calls for help, the yellow soul punches through, even as Flowey howls with frustration.

She wakes up, back at the beginning. Four souls left.

The next soul is blue, good-humored and friendly. He’s unconcerned by their predicaments, and he seems to have a strong sense for the intentions of the monsters that bar their way. They lack malice, the will to hurt, the will to kill, so he gives them the same courtesy.

As they leave the Ruins, it dawns on Chrome how deliberate that choice is. The first flutter of trepidation brushes her shoulders.

So, for the first time, she tries to communicate her own feelings to someone.

“Did you know?” she murmurs to sans after emerging from the conveniently-shaped lamp. “The human souls want to go home. And some of them are nicer than others.”

He stares at her, surprised, thoughtful. “thanks, kid. i’ll… remember that.”

_Don’t just remember,_ Chrome wants to say. _Do something about it._

But the blue soul is so nice, so easy-going. The ominous feeling was there and gone. It’s hard to feel too worried. So she tells sans something else, instead.

“ _I_ don’t want to hurt you.” She begins to leave the area, then turns back to give him a pitying look from her one good eye. “But I’m _their_ savior, not yours.”

Until she said the words, she hadn’t quite realized it, but now that she’s formed the thought, it feels right. That’s what she came here for, she can feel it. She’s saving the human souls, so they can save her.

She can’t quite read the look on sans’s face, but it chills her to the bone.

“i’ll remember that, too.”

The blue soul doesn’t spare the interaction a second thought – he didn’t lend it much significance to begin with – so Chrome can’t hold on to her concerns, either.

He spends a little too much time playing around in Snowdin, especially fetch with the dogs, but Chrome can’t bring herself to mind. It’s relieving the tension she’d begun to feel. He doesn’t even hesitate to spare or hang out with Papyrus, so she decides she can relax at last.

Maybe that’s why it rocks her so badly when he responds to Undyne’s intent to kill in kind.

Before she can process what’s happening, Undyne is melting. Then, there is dust on her hands.

She was a worthy opponent, the blue soul thinks happily.

Chrome simply moves on.

After cheerfully playing along with all the “killer robot’s” rigged attempts to kill them, when Mettaton comes at them seriously, the blue soul kills him, too.

Shouldn’t this hurt more? Chrome cared about the monsters before. She didn’t want to kill them before.

Maybe… those were just the feelings of her partner souls. So what does _she_ want? She doesn’t know yet. Perhaps, after she’s saved all the human souls, she’ll be able to discover the truth about herself.

With the blue soul’s intense d e t e r m i n a t i o n driving her body, she kills Asgore.

Flowey doesn’t understand what’s happening, why she keeps escaping, and his confusion outrages him. His attacks are awful, worse than when he had six souls, but Chrome can tell he’s only fueling the blue soul’s fury. _How dare that monster hurt his friend._

So when she’s finally, finally able to call for help, blue devastation rains down on the stunned abomination.

Three souls left. This one is green, and noticeably younger than the others. He cries, and whines, and his behavior is so erratic that Chrome grows dizzy. She loses track of where she is and what she’s doing.

His choices are impetuous, fueled by a child’s logic. The monsters in the Ruins are “gross,” so they crumple under his disgusted flailing. Toriel is a mama, so he won’t fight her no matter what.

He laughs and giggles and has so much fun with Papyrus’s puzzles, and refuses to leave Snowdin for the longest time.

He hates Waterfall, screaming and crying about how he hates the dark, it’s slimy here, Undyne is scary. He kills many of the monsters there, but he befriends the monster child, and he ends up fleeing Undyne (though he refuses to give her water when she collapses).

Mettaton has him acting like a gleeful child again, for all that he scoffs at Alphys. The puzzles in Hotland are confusing and frustrating for him, and he takes out his feelings on some of the monsters, but he calms down when Chrome assures him that she’ll solve the puzzles for him.

For the first time, they linger in Muffet’s lair, as the spider girl coos over the children delighting in her pastries. The green soul loves sweets, and thinks the webs are great fun to play in.

He has a little too _much_ fun pestering poor Burgerpants.

The green soul thinks Mettaton is still playing when he fights them for real, so somehow, they end up sparing him.

Asgore frightens him. No, Asgore _terrifies_ him. Chrome’s always had the impression that the souls don’t remember their own deaths, but the green soul must have some residue of his; nothing else could cause this kind of primal fear. He can’t do anything.

He’s been a difficult partner. Frustrating, loud, confusing, messy, exhausting.

But thanks to him, at last, Chrome finds a glimmer of her own desires.

She _wants_ to protect the human souls. She _wants_ to free them. It’s not just her duty, it’s her choice. 

Most of all, she wants to find the perfect partner, the one who’s waiting for her, hand outstretched, even if that hand is covered in blood.

She kills Asgore, of her own volition.

The green soul watches, awestruck. And he is d e t e r m i n e d to save her the way she’s saved him.

When Chrome reaches out for him from under Flowey’s frantic onslaught, she feels his small hand in hers. The world is green lightning, and then she’s back at the beginning.

Two souls left.

The red soul is tempestuous, angry and fierce. He lashes out at nearly every monster in their path as they traverse the Ruins, though he hesitates in the face of Toriel’s kindness. At last, he can’t bring himself to hurt her. They move on.

He doesn’t wait to find out what the monsters’s intentions are. If they attack him, they’re an enemy, plain and simple. Only the most obviously gentle creatures, like the Lesser and Greater Dogs, Papyrus, and Shyren, are granted mercy. He doesn’t waste time being nice or making friends.

He wants out. There’s someone he has to protect.

Alright, Chrome agrees placidly. She’s here to protect him, after all. To see him freed safely.

It doesn’t hurt at all anymore, to see dust on her hands. Is it possible to be fond of people, but not mind killing them? Somehow, she feels that way.

Should she feel guilty, for being this kind of person?

She doesn’t have the answer yet. It’s still difficult to process her own feelings.

They kill Undyne.

They kill Mettaton.

Filled with d e t e r m i n a t i o n to protect those they have to protect, they kill Asgore.

Flowey has to visibly steel himself before their fight. He has only two souls now. He lashes out at her, vicious and angry, but he has nowhere near the passion of the red soul, who responds with the intensity of a tornado when Chrome calls out for him.

At last, the final soul. Chrome wonders what will happen to her when this one is saved.

The purple soul is more violent than the red, colder, more selfish. Every monster in their path is mowed down.

For the first time, they kill Toriel.

For the first time, they kill Papyrus.

The underground is a colder place than it was at the beginning, Chrome thinks. It lacks the joy and fun it had before. How is it, that she can mourn that loss, but not regret her actions? Is there something wrong with her?

Every partner she’s had has made his choices so easily. He knows who he is and what he wants to do. But she still feels empty and alone, for all that she’s had someone by her side for so long now.

_They keep leaving her, though._

She wants to love the people here, too. So why doesn’t she care when her hands take their lives?

Why this contradiction? she wonders as the purple soul’s purposeful stride takes them away from Papyrus’s dust.

“Six human souls,” Undyne intones to them, unaware that there’s only one left now.

That’s when Chrome finds the contradiction.

Her partners all leave because they’re dead. They’re trapped down here because they were killed. By Asgore, but their deaths are on the shoulders of the whole underground, because the monsters don’t care about dead human children.

No, the monsters are _happy_ about the dead human children. They don’t hear their cries for freedom, for release, for the lives that were stolen from them.

Undyne, sans, everyone is angry and frightened when she kills monsters. But they killed her partners first. And she’s their savior.

The war was so long ago. Taking the lives of uninvolved children is wrong. Being happy that those children are dead, their souls stolen, their bodies kept from their families, is wrong.

Chrome loves the monsters, and Chrome hates the monsters. It’s not their fault, but it’s not her fault either, and it’s not the human souls’ fault. The world has spiraled into ruin and sorrow because of men who died centuries ago.

In the face of that despair, she will save who she came here to save.

The human souls, and…

Wandering through the underground as she wanders through her thoughts, dreamlike, soon enough Asgore’s dust is on her hands again. When they face Flowey, he quails under the pure and utter might of their combined d e t e r m i n a t i o n. She and the purple soul dispose of him so easily, it’s a wonder to her that she ever thought he was scary.

She wakes up at the golden flowerbed in the Ruins again.

This time, it’s the menacing presence by her side. But he doesn’t frighten her anymore. No – it was never her fear to begin with. He frightened the orange soul. The premonition was hers, but the feelings weren’t.

Now, she is the owner of her own soul. And this presence, the same indigo color as her own, is a comfort. Having him beside her feels _right._ She knows that this partner will never leave her, because he is her is him is she together forever.

Vaguely, she realizes that her name was not “Chrome” – “Kuromu” – before she fell down Mount Ebott. That’s only her name now because his is “Mukuro,” and they are two halves of the same whole.

Well, her old name doesn’t matter anymore.

Mukuro’s arms fold around her, weightless but as present as her own heartbeat. “You know, I gave Asriel the chance to bring back six corrupt humans to open the barrier with, long ago,” he hummed in her ear. “But he threw it away, and I’m sure you know what happened as a result. He was selfish, and a coward. Just like all of them. What do you say we erase this rotten world, Chrome?”

Yes. As long as Mukuro is by her side, always and forever, yes.

He chuckles in her ear. “Of course. I’m yours, and you’re mine. I’ll never leave you alone again, my precious Chrome.”

Mukuro keeps careful count as they kill each and every monster in the underground.

His d e t e r m i n a t i o n is beautiful.

At the end, sans awaits them. “is being a savior really worth it?” he asks tiredly, after they’ve all lost count of how many bad times it’s been.

Of course he remembers. But he doesn’t understand. And it’s too late for him to do anything anymore.

“It’s not our fault your savior couldn’t do what was necessary to save you,” Chrome says. “But I’m not like Asriel,” she goes on, as sans’s eyes widen. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

                                                                                Because she is filled with

                                                                                                             D E T E R M I N A T I O N


End file.
